When Kevin Slimp stepped outside the door of the community room at F & M Community Bank in Preston Friday after a seven-hour session with staff members of Bluff Country Newspaper Group, he said, “It really doesn’t feel that cold here.” This statement is from a resident of Knoxville, Tennessee, who first ventured out that morning in a temperature of 16 below zero.

When Kevin Slimp stepped outside the door of the community room at F & M Community Bank in Preston Friday after a seven-hour session with staff members of Bluff Country Newspaper Group, he said, “It really doesn’t feel that cold here.” This statement is from a resident of Knoxville, Tennessee, who first ventured out that morning in a temperature of 16 below zero.

Vina Lund, an Ostrander resident who just celebrated her 105th birthday, was asked by a reporter during her birthday party to confirm a story her son told about her dancing with the notorious outlaw, Babyface Nelson, at the Sheep Shed in Wykoff.

In 2006 Bibi Netanyahu told the Jewish community in Los Angeles, “It’s 1938 and Iran is Germany...racing to arm itself with atomic bombs,” recalls Patrick J. Buchanan, a nationally syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate, Inc., in an article reprinted in the March/April 2015 Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

The butterfly effect — the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil setting off a tornado in Texas — is a term used in chaos theory to describe how tiny variations can have a significant impact on giant, complex systems, such as weather patterns.

I, like several other citizens of Preston, thought the issues with the National Trout Center budget were being taken care of. I assumed that when it was stated that funds were being held until a budget was brought forward, that funds were being held.

I spent another day at school last week as a volunteer to help in the classroom of my third grade granddaughter. It’s through a program called WatchDOGS — the DOGS stands for Dads, or in my case grandDads, Of Great Students.

When I told my grandson I was going to be gone for a couple days last week to attend the Minnesota Newspaper Association annual convention in the Twin Cities, he asked what I was going to do. I told him mostly go to workshops and sessions to learn.

Proponents and opponents have already lined up on the proposals by DFL state senators in Minnesota and President Barack Obama to make tuition free for community college education as long as students meet certain criteria, such as reaching a certain grade point average and staying in school for two years.

A woman next to me at a community meeting commented to the group of local residents assembled there that “no one reads newspapers anymore.” I think she was being funny, while trying to needle me a bit since we knew each other, but it could very well be she also believed it since there are a lot of experts asserting the death of newspapers.

Likely few people who have made purchases in Fillmore County since Jan. 1 noticed they paid a new tax that was added to their total bill. The reason this new tax escaped notice is because a $10 purchase added just a nickel in state sales tax to their bill.

I typically write a letter to go in my personal Christmas cards each year to update people living elsewhere about our family. This year, I had a hard time with that task since our family really didn’t do anything too exciting the past year and it seemed the year was full of mostly bad news, which is better left to myself as it wouldn’t be a good fit for a cheerful Christmas letter.